Meditation in Action

80 Pages·2010·0.4 MB·English

by  Chögyam Trungpa

Meditation
in Action
Chögyam Trungpa
WITH A NEW AFTERWORD BY
Samuel Bercholz
SHAMBHALA
Boston & London
2010
The design on the cover is based on one of the seals of the Trungpa Tulkus. It is the Sanskrit word evam
(“thus”), which is used at the beginning of all sutras (“Thus have I heard”). At a deeper level, e represents
emptiness and vam the clear light.
SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, INC.
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Boston, Massachusetts 02115
www.shambhala.com
© 1991 by Diana Mukpo
Afterword © 2010 by Samuel Bercholz
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUES THE SHAMBHALA POCKET CLASSICS EDITION
OF THIS BOOK AS FOLLOWS:
Trungpa, Chögyam, 1939–
Meditation in action/Chögyam Trungpa.
—Boston: Shambhala, 1991
154 p.; 12 cm.
eISBN 978-0-8348-2126-2
ISBN 978-0-87773-550-2
ISBN 978-1-57062-202-2
ISBN 978-1-59030-159-3
ISBN 978-1-59030-876-9
1. Spiritual life—Buddhism.
I. Title. II. Series.
BQ4302.T783 1991 90-53385
294.3′443—dc20 CIP
Contents
The Life and Example of Buddha
The Manure of Experience and the Field of Bodhi
Transmission
Generosity
Patience
Meditation
Wisdom
Afterword
About the Author
Resources
The Life and Example of Buddha
I
T IS A CLEAR, hot summer’s day, and the thick branches of the sal trees are
brilliant with flowers and heavy with their load of fruit. The landscape is wild
and rocky with many caves, and the nearest town is more than a hundred miles
away. In some of the caves are yogis with long matted hair, dressed only in a thin
white cotton cloth. Some are sitting on deer skins and meditating. Others are
performing various yogic practices, such as meditating while seated in the
middle of a camp fire, which is a well-known ascetic practice. Yet others are
reciting mantras or devotional chants. The place has an atmosphere of peace,
solitude and stillness, but is also rather awesome. It might have remained
unchanged since before the creation of the world. It is completely still and silent.
There aren’t even any birds singing. There is a great river nearby, but no
fishermen. The river is so vast, it seems to be at least seven miles wide. On the
bank ascetics are practicing the sacred ritual of purification. One sees them
meditating and bathing in the river. That was the scene two thousand five
hundred years ago in a certain place called Nairanjana in the province of Bihar in
India.
A certain prince, called Siddhartha, arrives. His appearance is aristocratic; he
has only recently removed his crown and his earrings and ornaments, so he feels
rather naked. He has just sent away his horse and his last attendant, and now he
puts on a clean white cotton cloth. He looks around him and tries to imitate the
other ascetics. He wants to follow their example, so he approaches one of them
and asks for instruction in the practice of meditation. First he explains that he is
a prince and has found life in the palace to be meaningless. He has seen that
there is birth, death, sickness and old age. He has also seen a sage walking along
the street and this has inspired him. This is the example and the way of life he
wants to follow. It is all new to him, and at first he cannot accept that this is
actually happening. He cannot forget the luxuries and sensual enjoyments which
he had in the palace and which are still revolving through his mind. This was
prince Siddhartha, the future Buddha.
He then received instruction, perhaps rather unwillingly, from his present
guru. He was given the ascetic practice of a rishi and taught to sit cross-legged
and employ the seven postures of yoga and to practice yogic breathing exercises.
At first it was so new to him that it was almost like a game. He also enjoyed the
feeling of accomplishment at having at last managed to leave his worldly
possessions to follow this wonderful way of life. The memory of his wife and
child and his parents was still very much in his mind, which must have disturbed
his practice of yoga, but it seemed there was no way to control the mind. And the
yogis never told him anything, except to follow the ascetic practice.
This was Buddha’s experience, then, roughly two thousand five hundred years
ago. And one would find even now a very similar landscape and have very
similar experiences if one decided to leave home and renounce hot and cold
water baths and forget about home cooking and the luxury of riding in motor
cars, or public transport for that matter, which is still a great luxury. Some of us
might go by airplane and take only a few hours to get there: before you know
where you are, you are in the middle of India. Some who are more adventurous
may, perhaps, decide to hitchhike. Nevertheless it would still seem unreal, the
journey would be continually exciting and there would never be a dull moment.
Finally we arrive in India. Perhaps in some ways it is disappointing. You will see
a certain amount of modernization, and the snobbishness of the high-class,
better-educated Indians, who are still imitating the British Raj. One might find it
rather irritating at first, but somehow one accepts it and tries to leave the town as
quickly as possible and head for the jungle. (In this case it may be a Tibetan
monastery or an Indian ashram.) We could follow the same example and perhaps
have more or less the same experience as prince Siddhartha. The first thing that
would be very much on our minds would be the ascetic aspect of it, or rather the
absence of luxury. Now, would we learn anything from these first few days and
months? Perhaps we would learn something of the way of life. But perhaps,
because we had never seen such a country, we would be more inclined to be
excited. One tends to interpret everything, and an internal conversation goes on
in the mind as one struggles to break down the barriers of communication and
language. One is still living very much in one’s own world. Just as it was for
Buddha, so for us the excitement and the novelty of being in a strange country
would not wear out for several months. One would write letters home as if
possessed by the country, intoxicated with excitement and the strangeness of it
all. So if one returned after only a few days or weeks, one would not have
learned very much, one would merely have seen a different country, a different
way of life. And the same thing would have happened to Buddha if he had left
the jungle of Nairanjana and returned to his kingdom in Rajgir.
In the case of Buddha, he practiced meditation for a long time under Hindu
teachers, and he discovered that asceticism and merely conforming to one
religious setup did not particularly help. He still didn’t get the answer. Well,
perhaps he got some answers. In a sense these questions were already answered
in his mind, but he was more or less seeing what he wanted to see, rather than
seeing things as they were. So in order to follow the spiritual path one must first
overcome the initial excitement; that is one of the first essentials. For unless one
is able to overcome this excitement, one will not be able to learn, because any
form of emotional excitement has a blinding effect. One fails to see life as it is
because one tends so much to build up one’s own version of it. Therefore one
should never commit oneself or conform to any religious or political structure
without first finding the real essence of what one is looking for. Labeling
oneself, adopting an ascetic way of life or changing one’s costume—none of
these brings about any real transformation.
After several years Buddha decided to leave. He had learned a great deal in a
sense, but the time had come for him to say goodbye to his teachers, the Indian
rishis, and to go off on his own. He went to a place quite a long way from there,
although still on the bank of the Nairanjana river, and sat down under a pipal tree
(which is also known as the Bodhi tree). For several long years he remained
there, seated on a large stone, eating and drinking very little. This was not
because he felt it necessary to follow the practice of strict asceticism, but he did
feel it was necessary to remain alone and find things out for himself, rather than
to follow someone else’s example. He might have reached the same conclusions
by different methods, but that is not the point. The point is that whatever one is
trying to learn, it is necessary to have firsthand experience, rather than learning
from books or from teachers or by merely conforming to an already established
pattern. That is what he found, and in that sense Buddha was a great
revolutionary in his way of thinking. He even denied the existence of Brahma, or
God, the Creator of the world. He determined to accept nothing which he had not
first discovered for himself. This does not mean to say that he disregarded the
great and ancient tradition of India.
He respected it very much. His was not an anarchistic attitude in any negative
sense, nor was it revolutionary in the way the Communists are. His was real,
positive revolution. He developed the creative side of revolution, which is not
trying to get help from anyone else, but finding out for oneself. Buddhism is
perhaps the only religion which is not based on the revelation of God nor on
faith and devotion to God or gods of any kind. This does not mean that Buddha
was an atheist or a heretic. He never argued theological or philosophical
doctrines at all. He went straight to the heart of the matter, namely how to see the
truth. He never wasted time in vain speculation.
By developing such a revolutionary attitude one learns a great deal. For
example, suppose one misses lunch one day. One may not be hungry, one may
have had a large breakfast, but the idea of missing lunch affects one. Certain
patterns are formed within the framework of society and one tends to accept
them without questioning. Are we really hungry, or do we just want to fill up that
particular midday time? That is a very simple and straightforward example. But
much the same applies when we come to the question of ego.
Buddha discovered that there is no such thing as “I,” ego. Perhaps one should
say there is no such thing as “am,” “I am.” He discovered that all these concepts,
ideas, hopes, fears, emotions, conclusions, are created out of one’s speculative
thoughts and one’s psychological inheritance from parents and upbringing and so
on. We just tend to put them all together, which is of course partly due to lack of
skill in our educational system. We are told what to think, rather than to do real
research from within ourselves. So in that sense asceticism, meaning the
experience of bodily pain, is by no means an essential part of Buddhism. What is
important is to get beyond the pattern of mental concepts which we have formed.
That does not mean that we have to create a new pattern or try to be particularly
unconventional and always go without lunch or what have you. We do not have
to turn everything upside down in our pattern of behavior and in the way we
present ourselves to other people. That again would not particularly solve the
problem. The only way to solve the problem is by examining it thoroughly. From
this point of view we have a certain desire—or not even as strong as desire—
more a feeling of wanting to conform to something. And one does not even think
about it, one is just led to it. So it is necessary to introduce the idea of
mindfulness. Then we can examine ourselves each time, and go beyond mere
opinions and so-called common sense conclusions. One must learn to be a
skillful scientist and not accept anything at all. Everything must be seen through
one’s own microscope and one has to reach one’s own conclusions in one’s own
way. Until we do that, there is no savior, no guru, no blessings and no guidance
which could be of any help.
Of course, there is always this dilemma: if there is no help, then what are we?
Are we nothing? Are we not trying to reach something higher? What is this
higher thing? What, for example, is Buddhahood? What is enlightenment? Are
they just nothing, or are they something? Well, I am afraid I am really no
authority to answer this. I am merely one of the travelers, like everyone else
here. But from my own experience—and my knowledge is, as the scripture
describes it, “like a single grain of sand in the Ganges”—I would say that when
we talk of “higher” things we tend to think in terms of our own point of view, a
bigger version of ourselves. When we speak of God, we tend to think in terms of
our own image, only greater, colossal, a kind of expansion of ourselves. It is like
looking at ourselves in a magnifying mirror. We still think in terms of duality. I
am here, He is there. And the only way to communicate is by trying to ask His
help. We may feel we are making contact at certain times, but somehow we can
never really communicate in this way. We can never achieve union with God,
because there is a fixed concept, a prefabricated conclusion, which we have
already accepted and we are merely trying to put that great thing into a small
container. One cannot drive a camel through the eye of a needle. So we have to
find some other means. And the only way to find it is to come back to the sheer
simplicity of examining ourselves. This is not a question of trying to be
“religious” or of making sure that one is kind to one’s neighbor, or of giving as
much money as possible to charity. Though of course these things may also be
very good. The main point is that we should not merely accept everything
blindly and try to fit it into the right pigeonhole, but try to see it at first hand
from our own experience.
This brings us to the practice of meditation, which is very important. The
trouble here is that one usually finds that books, teachings, lectures and so on are
more concerned with proving that they are right than with showing how it is to
be done, which is the essential thing. We are not particularly interested in
spreading the teachings, but we are interested in making use of them and putting
them into effect. The world is moving so fast, there is no time to prove, but
whatever we learn, we must bring it and cook it and eat it immediately. So the
whole point is that we must see with our own eyes and not accept any laid-down
tradition as if it had some magical power in it. There is nothing magical which
can transform us just like that. Although, being mechanically minded, we always
look for something which will work by merely pressing a button. There is a great
attraction in the shortcut, and if there is some profound method which offers a
quick way, we would rather follow that than undertake arduous journeys and
difficult practices. So here we see the true importance of asceticism: punishing
oneself leads nowhere, but some manual work and physical effort is necessary. If
we go somewhere on foot, we know the way perfectly, whereas if we go by
motor car or airplane we are hardly there at all, it becomes merely a dream.
Similarly, in order to see the continual pattern of development, we have to go
through it manually. That is one of the most important things of all. And here
discipline becomes necessary. We have to discipline ourselves. Whether in the
practice of meditation or in everyday life, there is a tendency to be impatient. On
beginning something one tends to just taste it and then leave it; one never has the
time to eat it and digest it properly and see the aftereffect of it. Of course, one
has to taste for oneself and find out if the thing is genuine or helpful, but before
discarding it one has to go a little bit further, so that at least one gets firsthand
experience of the preliminary stage. This is absolutely necessary.
That is also what Buddha found. And that is why he sat and meditated on the
bank of the Nairanjana for several years, hardly moving from the spot. He